Is Everyone Using AI to Cheat Their Way Through College? (msn.com) 39
Chungin Lee used ChatGPT to help write the essay that got him into Columbia University — and then "proceeded to use generative artificial intelligence to cheat on nearly every assignment," reports New York magazine's blog Intelligencer:
As a computer-science major, he depended on AI for his introductory programming classes: "I'd just dump the prompt into ChatGPT and hand in whatever it spat out." By his rough math, AI wrote 80 percent of every essay he turned in. "At the end, I'd put on the finishing touches. I'd just insert 20 percent of my humanity, my voice, into it," Lee told me recently... When I asked him why he had gone through so much trouble to get to an Ivy League university only to off-load all of the learning to a robot, he said, "It's the best place to meet your co-founder and your wife."
He eventually did meet a co-founder, and after three unpopular apps they found success by creating the "ultimate cheat tool" for remote coding interviews, according to the article. "Lee posted a video of himself on YouTube using it to cheat his way through an internship interview with Amazon. (He actually got the internship, but turned it down.)" The article ends with Lee and his co-founder raising $5.3 million from investors for one more AI-powered app, and Lee says they'll target the standardized tests used for graduate school admissions, as well as "all campus assignments, quizzes, and tests. It will enable you to cheat on pretty much everything."
Somewhere along the way Columbia put him on disciplinary probation — not for cheating in coursework, but for creating the apps. But "Lee thought it absurd that Columbia, which had a partnership with ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI, would punish him for innovating with AI." (OpenAI has even made ChatGPT Plus free to college students during finals week, the article points out, with OpenAI saying their goal is just teaching students how to use it responsibly.) Although Columbia's policy on AI is similar to that of many other universities' — students are prohibited from using it unless their professor explicitly permits them to do so, either on a class-by-class or case-by-case basis — Lee said he doesn't know a single student at the school who isn't using AI to cheat. To be clear, Lee doesn't think this is a bad thing. "I think we are years — or months, probably — away from a world where nobody thinks using AI for homework is considered cheating," he said...
In January 2023, just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments.
The article points out ChatGPT's monthly visits increased steadily over the last two years — until June, when students went on summer vacation. "College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point," a student in Utah recently captioned a video of herself copy-and-pasting a chapter from her Genocide and Mass Atrocity textbook into ChatGPT.... It isn't as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, "the ceiling has been blown off." Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences?
After using ChatGPT for their final semester of high school, one student says "My grades were amazing. It changed my life." So she continued used it in college, and "Rarely did she sit in class and not see other students' laptops open to ChatGPT."
One ethics professor even says "The students kind of recognize that the system is broken and that there's not really a point in doing this." (Yes, students are even using AI to cheat in ethics classes...) It's not just the students: Multiple AI platforms now offer tools to leave AI-generated feedback on students' essays. Which raises the possibility that AIs are now evaluating AI-generated papers, reducing the entire academic exercise to a conversation between two robots — or maybe even just one.
He eventually did meet a co-founder, and after three unpopular apps they found success by creating the "ultimate cheat tool" for remote coding interviews, according to the article. "Lee posted a video of himself on YouTube using it to cheat his way through an internship interview with Amazon. (He actually got the internship, but turned it down.)" The article ends with Lee and his co-founder raising $5.3 million from investors for one more AI-powered app, and Lee says they'll target the standardized tests used for graduate school admissions, as well as "all campus assignments, quizzes, and tests. It will enable you to cheat on pretty much everything."
Somewhere along the way Columbia put him on disciplinary probation — not for cheating in coursework, but for creating the apps. But "Lee thought it absurd that Columbia, which had a partnership with ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI, would punish him for innovating with AI." (OpenAI has even made ChatGPT Plus free to college students during finals week, the article points out, with OpenAI saying their goal is just teaching students how to use it responsibly.) Although Columbia's policy on AI is similar to that of many other universities' — students are prohibited from using it unless their professor explicitly permits them to do so, either on a class-by-class or case-by-case basis — Lee said he doesn't know a single student at the school who isn't using AI to cheat. To be clear, Lee doesn't think this is a bad thing. "I think we are years — or months, probably — away from a world where nobody thinks using AI for homework is considered cheating," he said...
In January 2023, just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments.
The article points out ChatGPT's monthly visits increased steadily over the last two years — until June, when students went on summer vacation. "College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point," a student in Utah recently captioned a video of herself copy-and-pasting a chapter from her Genocide and Mass Atrocity textbook into ChatGPT.... It isn't as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, "the ceiling has been blown off." Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences?
After using ChatGPT for their final semester of high school, one student says "My grades were amazing. It changed my life." So she continued used it in college, and "Rarely did she sit in class and not see other students' laptops open to ChatGPT."
One ethics professor even says "The students kind of recognize that the system is broken and that there's not really a point in doing this." (Yes, students are even using AI to cheat in ethics classes...) It's not just the students: Multiple AI platforms now offer tools to leave AI-generated feedback on students' essays. Which raises the possibility that AIs are now evaluating AI-generated papers, reducing the entire academic exercise to a conversation between two robots — or maybe even just one.
Prof here (Score:5, Informative)
...and the answer is: only the students who would struggle or fail anyway. It's not hard to catch them, at least, in technical courses.
Of course, (1) you have to want to catch them, and (2) the administration has to have your back.
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Parent here, with a son graduating high school. ChatGPT is used by everyone he knows in high school. He used it recently to write an essay for a highschool class. But it's not the essay he handed in. More like it wrote out an outline that he used to get started on his essay. Kinda like a first draft, but more just to give him inspiration for him to get started in writing something in his own voice.
I saw him do it, and told him that it was reasonable so long as he didn't try to submit something that was
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But it is a good way to get a start on a paper.
Sure, if he was never taught that.
Fail.
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reading the Wikipedia page
Wikipedia is so bad there's peer reviewed articles about how it's one of the leading vectors of holocaust denial [tandfonline.com].
Re: Prof here (Score:1)
They are the same people who will get caught once employed, exaggerating their knowledge, skills and experience. 100% frauds. You really can't fake it until you make it in a skilled position. Marketing sure. Technical not a chance. You will be caught.
Re: Can't understand why my kid is bothering... (Score:2)
I'll bite.
Which people aren't worth saving?
Yes (Score:2)
It is so easy, nobody can resist it.
Besides, as we see from the many comments here, being shameless about having "AI" generate garbage instead of you is a valuable ability.
In a decade, the population of the "developed world" won't be able to read, write or do arithmetic.
And that's how it'll stop to be a "developed" world.
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Back to in class writing and testing. (Score:2)
In a decade, the population of the "developed world" won't be able to read, write or do arithmetic.
Only if we do absolutely nothing about this. An easy solution would be to have more work done in controlled settings. Using AI to cheat on homework won't get kids very far if the bulk of their grades are dependant on their performance accomplishing things in classroom where they can't use it.
That's going to be trickier for some majors more than others but not impossible
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It's tests, baby, all the way down! Midterms! Quarterlies! Weekly quizzes! Your grade is now 10% attendance and 90% exams! Good luck! Just be thankful they aren't oral.
Universities are officially stupid. But so is this (Score:1)
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It takes a startling amount of incompetence to take four years worth of classes and not learn anything.
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Get on the bus sometime and look around. Nearly everyone around you is having sex pretty regularly. It's not special, it's how we exist. everyone does it.
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You should feel neither, because that post has a zero percent chance of being true.
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I learned a lot in college, but I've learned a heck of lot more since college from just life and experience. Actually I've learned more from some great youtube channels about a variety of topics, some CS-related, some not, than I did in many of my college courses. That's not the fault of the college courses, nor is it my fault.
Uni did teach me some vital skills, though. Like how to reason about complexity, and how algorithms work. I also learned vital skills of how to ask the right questions and how to
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I learned a lot in college, but I've learned a heck of lot more since college from just life and experience. Actually I've learned more from some great youtube channels about a variety of topics, some CS-related, some not, than I did in many of my college courses.
That's great, you learned more in the many years since college than you did in the four short years of college. It means you've continued to learn, good job.
They took our jerbs!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They took our jerbs!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
An old piece of shit defends the new pieces of shit.
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When I was in college, I made extra money by typing papers for other students, who had hand-written them because they didn't know how to type. It was the 1980s, and the price was $1 per double-spaced typewritten page. The personal computer took THAT job away, and AI had nothing to do with it.
Yes, I'm ignoring the obvious cheating you used for profit. The point is, technology has been taking people's jobs for centuries.
Employers will have to sort out the cheats (Score:2)
At the end of the day it all comes down to employers. If everyone - or at least practically everyone - is getting AI to do all their college work for them then the college degree basically becomes worthless because it is no longer any measure of knowledge or ability in whatever subject it is supposed to represent. If employers wish to identify capably potential employees for any job other than operating AI then they need to test the candidates themselves. Further more they need to physically do this in p
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At the end of the day it all comes down to employers.
OK... I'll hear this out.
If everyone - or at least practically everyone - is getting AI to do all their college work for them then the college degree basically becomes worthless because it is no longer any measure of knowledge ...
Was it ever a measure of knowledge (IE: facts)? It's supposed to give you the tools to get the results you're after. It's not there to help you memorize the encyclopedia.
... or ability in whatever subject it is supposed to represent.
Please explain. IMO, ability in a subject sounds like your talking about results based valuation - can this person do this thing well enough for the role in the real world? If they've figured out a way to do that and it leverages new/different tools (eg. LLMs), and the results are as good or better than graduates f
The Real Cheats. (Score:5, Insightful)
"I think we are years — or months, probably — away from a world where nobody thinks using AI for homework is considered cheating,"
One might also argue that we’re but years or months away from labeling a college graduate as nothing more than someone who hopes their $60K+ investment in a Bachelors of Artful Scamming is going to be valued outside of a college campus marketing bubble.
If cheating is that prevalent across the board, guess we better prepare for job interviews/interrogations that last four fucking days. Not like a degree is going to imply educated anymore.
I dont believe this guys story (Score:2)
Re:I dont believe this guys story (Score:4, Interesting)
A Stanford grad friend of mine has a son who dropped out of a very good university after one year because it was obviously a scam by everyone involved. He's getting into plumbing now, with my friend's encouragement. His other son is presently at Stanford and feels the same way as his older brother but is intent on beating the system some other way.
My own son "accidentally" got an associate's degree in mathematics the Olde Fashioned Way ("linear algebra is fun!") but he's in disbelief at what's going on around him at the community college level. He doesn't think it will be much different after transferring to a top University of California campus, either. I'm trying to keep my daughter from just completely giving up before her senior year of a hybrid high school/college program: she thinks the whole thing is bullshit on every side.
Undermines one of America's biggest advantages (Score:2)
Congratulations, Mr. Lee. "Innovators' like you are helping to turn America's higher ed system "degrees" into the fancy toilet paper that a typical degree from Belarus or Congo would be worth.
Colleges will likely have to turn to extreme measures to survive. Don't be surprised that if by 2030, all college exams will be done with pencils and paper, in Faraday cages.) Maybe now's a good time to invest in Bic or Dixon Ticonderoga?